Tag Archives: Academy Awards

“Wait, we’re done? Like, I can go home now? I don’t have to keep watching hundreds upon hundreds of movies?”

~Our Film Screener. He’s So, So Tired.

Well, it’s been a long, weird ride. We’ve gone through the relatively boring 70s, the all-over-the-place 80s (literally half of the revised winners were films that weren’t even nominated initially, and no, you will not make us rescind giving Die Hard an Oscar, fuck you), the “are you fucking kidding me with this, Dances With Wolves” 90s, and the Lord of the Rings comeback tour of the early 00s, but now we’re finally on our final article of this sordid crazy ride we’ve been on. By the end of this article, we will have written over 40,000 words (Jesus, that’s like a short novel, what are we doing with our lives) telling you about over 200 films (well actually 209, because 9 of these 40 Academy Awards ended up going to movies that were not originally nominated). If you think it’s been exhausting going through this list (and we know it has, so many of our choices have made you so angry for mostly completely legitimate reasons, sorry about American Beauty, guys) it’s been about a million times more exhausting to compile it.

But we’re at the finish line! Just five more years of Academy Award ceremonies to go through in order to correct history! One last time for those in the back, here’s how we’re doing this. We’ll list each group of films by the year their Academy Awards ceremony was held. So when we talk about 2005, we’re discussing the 2005 Academy Award ceremony, which was given for movies made in 2004. 2006’s entries are all films from 2005, you get the deal, we’ve literally done seven of these already (and if you’ve randomly found this article because you googled “Oscar Sex Party Big Boobs” and clicked the second link on the third page of results, um, listen we’re sorry we honestly didn’t think that would work SEO-wise, we’re sorry, there are no Oscar Sex Party Big Boobs here, or even Oscar Sex Party REGULAR Boobs, but, um, check out our other films in our brand new Re-Awarding the Academy Award section if you want to see the other articles in this series. No, none of them have boobs. Again, we’re sorry).

So yeah. The parenthetical number next to each movie is their IMDB user rating, which we realize was a dumb and arbitrary thing to go by, but we just include it to give you an idea of how fondly the film has been remembered. And finally, as you no doubt have gathered, we’ll be listing every winner and nominee from each year, but you don’t have to be nominated to go home with the re-awarded statue.

“Hahaha wait, we won Best Picture? That can’t be right. Are you guys Moonlighting us here or?”

~Chicago

It’s been a long journey for all of us, but we’re nearly finished. Started on a whim, our decision to go through every single Oscar winner for Best Picture from 1970 to 2009, tell you about all the nominated films, and re-award the Academy Award has taken so much time and research we don’t know why we even started. Simple math should have told us that this would require us to discuss two hundred fucking movies, but we don’t do math, and we literally just figured that out now. But it’s too late to turn back. Just two more left to go, so let’s get going.

You can of course look here, here, here, here, here or even here for our previous entries, but for now, let’s go through each Academy Award ceremony for the first half of the 2000s and determine where the Academy got things right, and where they went wrong.

We feel like we don’t really need to rehash this another time. The Oscars are sometimes wrong, so we went ahead and made them right. Go here, here, here, here or here for the first five segments of this feature. Once again, the years listed are for the year the ceremony took place, not the year the winning film was released. And the number in the parentheses after each name is just the IMDB user rating, which is one of many factors we take into consideration when doling out the final prizes.

It’s been a long road on this misguided journey. Since last week, we’ve been going through all the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture, starting from the year 1970 (the year the award was held, mind you. All the movies came out the previous year) and have redistributed those prizes with the knowledge we have today, as well as a lot of subjectivity that has been driving our readers insane. We’ve listed the winners, listed the nominees, and then told you what film released that year deserved to win. The 1970s were pretty clean, with 5 Oscars staying with their original winner, and five going to other films that were nominated, but the 1980s saw things take a messy turn. Sure, a few movies, like Platoon and Amadeus kept their statues, but a lot of worlds were turned upside, especially in 1988 where we gave the damn thing to the Princess Bride. Oh, and if you’re expecting us to try to explain giving an Oscar to Die Hard, just watch this clip and tell us we’re wrong.

…Shut up, you’re wrong.

Anyway, there’s no stopping us now. Look below for our redistribution of the all the Oscars of the first half of the 1990s. Here’s hoping that the Academy nominated more movies we’ve heard of this decade.

We are now three articles and over 12,000 words into our ambitious attempt to re-award every single Academy Award from 1970 to 2009 while finding at least one way to screw over the favorite movie of every single one of our readers. It’s been a whirlwind ride, with some hard decisions and a lot of movies we had no clue even existed. But now it’s time to dive deep into the mid-to-late 80’s, a decade which has seen a lot of awards not only changing hands, but going to movies that weren’t even originally nominated. But then again, they thought shoulder pads were a great idea in the 1980’s, so it’s not surprising that the Academy messed things up back then.

Once again to hash out the rules. Each year is listed not by the film’s release, but by the date of the ceremony (so 1985’s entry is for films released in 1984, etc). We’ll tell you the original winners, and nominees, along with their IMDB user rating, and then will re-award that year’s Oscar. It could go to the same movie, but more often than not it’ll be going to someone else.

So let’s dive in, shall we? There were some pretty competitive years in this batch.

This week we have shared with you twoarticles that went through every Best Picture winner in the Academy Awards in the 1970s to determine which films get to keep their trophy, and which have to give them up to another film. How did we determine this? Hindsight and our own extremely arbitrary opinions, of course. Frankly, we were a bit surprised and disappointed that there wasn’t more chaos in reassigning the awards from the 70’s. Five movies kept their Oscars and with the exception of one year, the highest IMDB user rating came away with the revised award. Today, we continue our “oh shit, this is taking a lot more work than we expected when we pitched it” series by delving into the first half of the 1980s, year-by-year, with the expectation that the 1980s’ increase in film production quality (and, you know, cocaine) will lead to more insanity.

And here we again will remind you what to expect from this article. We list each year by the actual year of the Academy Award ceremony (meaning that for each year, we are talking about films released the prior year. The 1980 award, for example, covers only films that came out in 1979). We will also say what other films were nominated, and will show the IMDB user rating next to each film’s name. We are aware that IMDB users are not necessarily the most logical bunch, and the rating doesn’t necessarily dictate what films we choose, but it is a factor, albeit one of many. In some instances, we will have found that the Academy got it right the first time, but more often than not we’ll be giving the award to another film, be that film previously nominated or not.

So let’s dive in, nose first, to the 1980s and take away some hard-earned Oscars!

Earlier this week we decided on a whim (read as, while drinking whiskey in the middle of the day) that we would go through all the Academy Awards for Best Picture that were handed out in every ceremony from 1970 through 2009 and determine what movies from that year should really have come away with the win. And, well, it took us 4,500 words to cover five years. Yeah, um, this is going to take a while. So let’s keep motoring through.

But first, a quick refresher on our process here. We will list each Academy Award by the year the award was presented, as opposed to the year that the films came out. Yes, it’s frustratingly confusing, but we’ve made this arbitrary decision and are sticking to it. So all of our entries for 1975 came out in 1974, 1976’s Oscar is for films released in 1975, you get the idea. We’ll tell you what movie won originally as well as what films were originally nominated. We will include the IMDB user ratings for each film as a widely imperfect marker of quality. Then, we’ll decide who actually deserves that Academy Award. In our first article, two films kept their statue, while three were handed out to different nominees. A film doesn’t have to have been nominated originally to get the award, but it does help.

Now, with that all being said, let’s dive into our next batch of films.

Like it or not, the Academy Awards carry a lot of influence in terms of what movies we deem to be worth remembering. It doesn’t matter if it’s about a ruthless mob family, or the subtleties of fish fucking, the Academy Award for Best Picture ensures all winners go down in history. But sometimes history is wrong, and in the case of the Academy Awards, it’s wrong often. Now, Academy Award voters don’t have the benefit of hindsight, but we do. We have all the hindsight. ALL OF IT.

That’s why we decided to go through every Academy Award ceremony from 1970 through 2009 and give out those Best Picture Oscars one more time. Sometimes this will mean that the same movie is going to win. But a lot of the time, we’re going to be taking away Academy Awards and giving them to more deserving films. Yes, you are going to get mad a lot reading this series. And yes, you are going to be very confused by our decision to go with the year each award was given out, as opposed to the year the winning movies were released. Listen, when you make an omelette, you’re going to mix up a few metaphors, alright?

Here’s what we’re going to do. For each Academy Award ceremony, we’ll tell you who won, and who else was nominated. We will list the IMDB user rating for each film—it’s an imperfect marker of quality, for sure, but it at least can give you an idea of how the general public views the movie today. Then, we’ll tell you which movie gets the AFFotD-awarded Oscar. For all we know, the movie might end up being one that wasn’t even nominated. Either way, we’ll go through the important movies that came out each year, and tell you who wins that designated Oscar (again, remember, the ceremony takes place after the movies are released, so the 1970 ceremony is for 1969 movies, 1971 is for 1970, etc.) All clear? Good.

So strap yourselves in, because the next few weeks, America Fun Fact of the Day is going to fix the Academy Awards. You’re welcome.

America has always had a fascination with escapes. We make movies about escaping POW camps, our favorite game during Recess was Jail Break, and there was that one show on Fox that we only really watched for the first season, but apparently lasted for more seasons than Arrested Development. There’s something American about sticking it to some sort of foreign land or domestic legal system(though we tend to have an easier time rooting for it when there’s a “Innocent person in jail” angle, but whatever).

Remember this? No? Nothing?

It is with the intrepid “this bird cannot be caged” American mindset, then, that we present you with…

As we established in yesterday’s fun fact, the Oscars are not always fair. Sometimes they can be cruel, political film awards that completely ignore some classic American performances. That’s why we decided to do something about it, and forcibly steal other actors’ hard earned Oscars and give them to more worthy recipients. So, here, please see our final two American Oscar Award winners.